MacNN Rating:

Price: $120

The Good

The Bad

Highly noticeable due to size, shape, color, and logo.

Prone to attacks from hackers

Poor microphone quality

No local recording

Home security is becoming a more widely accessible option with each new stride made in technology. A few decades ago, only a handful of people had home security systems, but today upwards of 20 percent of Americans have a name-brand security system installed. Thanks to the dawn of the app and the home wireless network, there's a large do-it-yourself market for home security as well, aimed at making you feel safer without breaking the bank. We checked out SpotCam, an HD wireless camera that is designed to help you keep tabs on your home while you're away.

On the matter of Secrecy

Now, if you're looking for a security camera, we'll shoot straight with you: this isn't exactly inconspicuous. It's fairly large, glossy white tube with a telltale big, black camera lens, and reads "SpotCam" right on the front. There's no hiding what it is. If you're not too worried about the lack of secrecy, it's worth taking a look at. The SpotCam also comes with wall-mounting hardware, but is capable of standing on its own and flexing about 160 degrees. There's no internal battery, so wherever you place the SpotCam will have to be close to a power outlet, which limits the places you can covertly place it.

Under the Hood

Hardware wise, the SpotCam boasts a 110 degree diagonal view lens, similar to a fisheye lens, that is capable of taking video in 720p. This means that you get a fairly wide shot of the area you're surveying, which helps limit the need for more than one camera. The camera comes with a night vision feature, handled by 12x IR LED, which provides decent night coverage. SpotCam also features both a microphone and a speaker, meaning that it's possible to listen to the room it's set up in, as well as speak through the camera's built in speaker. It's worth noting that the built in speaker's quality is abhorrently bad and anyone you talk to through it isn't going to understand a single thing you say.

The SpotCam is also IP54 water and dust resistant, meaning that if you mount it outdoors, it should be able to withstand the normal onslaught of pollen and your average rain. We still suggest that it be mounted under an overhang because while it is rated for "splash protection", we think that prolonged heavy rain might do in the SpotCam. It's worth noting that the makers of SpotCam do have an IP65 outdoor version of the camera, which is rated to work in heavy rain and dustier environments.

Getting Connected

The SpotCam requires a wireless network to work, and will actively stream the video to myspotcam.com. The setup process is somewhat of a hassle and took us a few times to get it right. It requires you log into myspotcam.com, add your SpotCam, and then use it as a wireless access point. This took us multiple tries of just mashing the "connect" button and hoping for the best, but eventually it did end up working. We thought that this process could be greatly improved and we didn't enjoy it. It doesn't help that the only information that is included in the box is a single sheet of paper that directs you to myspotcam.com's online wizard, which means that if there's a problem turning it into a wireless access point, you're without Internet to troubleshoot your problems. We were not a big fan of this in the slightest. Our most helpful tip we can give you is when they say "put SpotCam close to your router" - listen to them. Put it physically on top of your router if possible, as this will greatly increase your chance of success.

It's incredibly important to realize that there is no local-recording, all content from the SpotCam will be recorded to the myspotcam.com website. All users get a free 24 hours worth of recording to the cloud, and from there they are allowed to download clips to their hard drive. If you need more than 24 hours worth of storage, various packages are available and are actually fairly reasonably priced. Because this is a wireless camera, though, users should take care as it can be susceptible to being hacked, much like any other internet-based service. We strongly urge you to create a unique password and take extra precautions to make sure your networks are secure, as wireless cameras can and have been used to spy on families from within their own homes - providing the exact opposite effect of a security camera.

Interfacing with SpotCam

Once you're set up, you can access the settings of your camera from either the iOS or Android apps or via the Internet. If you've got more than one camera, you can name each of them (eg: office, garage, living room), which allows you to keep tabs on each camera easily. You have the ability to turn on and off the status light, which is helpful if you're trying to make the shiny, bright-white tube with a camera lens stand out a little less. From both the website or the app you can also toggle on and off night vision, as well as the camera itself, or set it up to only record if there's movement or sound detected.

The web-interface is quite a bit more robust than the app version, including the ability to see events triggered (either through sound or motion) and a detailed view of your timeline. All sound and motion events are also marked in your timeline on the browser version, but these features are unavailable in the app. The app version is also far less appealing to look at and just feels like it was an afterthought, which struck as as odd, seeing as it touts itself as a mobile solution. That doesn't mean that it's bad, but we hope that the developers will take the time to improve it in the future.

The Bigger Picture

The images that SpotCam provides are nice, high quality images. They're sharp, they look good, and we absolutely liked the way it worked once we got it working. It was easy to go in and change the settings when needed and it streamed with a relatively low (1-2 second) lag. The free 24 hour storage was a big plus, and being able to download clips onto our computer for later use was nice as well. We're thinking that this is some serious puppy or kitten cam material, or something we'd like to use to monitor the back yard from a windowsill. That being said, we'd advise against using it as a business security solution, and we certainly wouldn't do anything terribly private in front of the SpotCam, including using the SpotCam as a baby monitor. That just seems like it's asking for trouble.

The Verdict:

It's not the worst solution for home security, but it isn't the best either. Because it needs to continuously be connected to the internet, it leaves it vulnerable to attack which could make it more of a liability than anything else. Barring that, it's not a bad camera, and there was certainly a lot of care and effort put into designing it as the hardware seems solid. Almost all of our problems lie in the software side of the SpotCam, which could easily be fixed in the future by app and website upgrades. If you're looking for a good camera on the hardware side, we highly recommend it. If you're looking for something that is easy to use and extremely secure, we can't promise this will fit the bill. The SpotCam retails at Amazon for $120.

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